Therapy To Fix You
by goldenslider
Summary: When Troy Bolton's parents send him to a place to be cured of being gay, he has no idea what events will happen in his life.
1. On The Way To The Centre

Therapy To Fix you

Based on "AGP", a story I'd written for My Sliders series, which was based on an idea from "But I'm A Cheerleader".

When Troy Bolton's parents send him to a centre to try and cure him of being gay, he has no idea what events will happen to him.

Those who read my earlier stories know me as a happy gay 22 year old writer. Nothing in this story is any reflection on my thoughts, and is barely an attempt to entertain. I respect the beliefs of those who hold them, and although I don't personally believe in God and all the thoughts and beliefs held over the badness of homosexuality, I'm not about to start bashing people who feel like that. Nor am I meaning any disrespect to anyone who believes in the concept of reparative therapy programs or ex-gays. While I don't agree with them, I like the idea of people who can fall in love at these places.

This story will have characters who are big on Christianity, and may verbally abuse gay or lesbian characters. There may also be parts when people are verbally attacked for their religion. Again, nothing that is said against gay people or religious beliefs is any reflection on me or my thoughts.

I started writing a version of this in 2004, where my stories based on the tv show Sliders had a character who ended up in a place like this, fell in love with someone, and took him with him when they escape and left for another parallel Earth. I was originally planning on writing this in a similar style as that, with Ryan being a 'slider' and ending up in a world where it was illegal to be gay, and those who seemed to be were sent to centres to try and cure them, or they were sent to prison for fourteen months in isolation. He would meet Troy at this place, but this Troy would be different from the Troy he knew. Eventually they'd fall for each other, and they escape to another world. But that idea was too similar to the My Sliders story. So I changed it. Now it has no sci-fi elements. And is just a normal story that I'd like to think could happen in the world.

Cassandra Yates is the only thing taken from the My Sliders story. I felt I created an interesting character and I didn't use her enough in that story, so I'd like to flesh her out more here.

Sorry this introduction has been so long. Just wanted to give you an idea of the thought process behind the story.

* * *

"I'm what?"

Troy Bolton stood in disbelief at what his mother just said to him.

"You're gay, Troy."

Troy's mind spun, and he felt sick. He looked at his father, sitting in his chair, his feet up on the table, newspaper in his lap, barely paying attention to the conversation he and his mother just had.

"No I'm not." Troy said, rather too loudly for his father, who just looked over at him, then back to his newspaper.

"It's okay, love. We know it's not your fault."

"But I have a girlfriend. I'm captain of the basketball team. I love girls." He sat himself down onto the couch. "I know I've done a few musicals and stuff at school, but being a singer and dancer doesn't make me gay."

"It's not the musicals we're on about, son. It's the company you keep in the musicals. We know about what happened after your performance last week."

Troy thought back. What had happened that night? He'd took the bow with Gabriella, left, then came back on again a few seconds later and took the bow again, this time with Sharpay and Ryan joining him and Gabriella. They'd left stage, and went back to Darbus' room next to the stage. They'd laughed, talked a bit, got over the high of the performance. Darbus said some things. He'd kissed Gabriella. Then he'd kissed Sharpay. In purely a friendly manner. And Gabriella said something about "doesn't Ryan get one". So he'd given Ryan a quick kiss. Just a friend kissing another friend. He was a friend after all.

Surely that couldn't be what his parents were on about?

"Miss Darbus told us about it. You know, you kissing that Evans boy."

"But that wasn't anything. That was just us joking about."

"Pretty funny way to joke about." His father said, not looking up from his paper.

"I'm not gay." Troy called again. "I know Ryan's gay, but that doesn't mean I am. He's a friend, that's all." He stared his mother in her eyes. "We were so buzzed after the musical, we were just letting off steam. It wasn't as if I'd snogged the face off him or anything, it was just a small touch on the lips."

"But you still kissed a boy. It's not the first time your father and I have been contacted about something like this."

Troy glanced over at his father, hiding in his face in the paper, then turned back to his mother.

"I AM NOT GAY." he shouted and stood up, making a bee-line for the door.

"It's good you're thinking like that honey, it'll make it so much easier at the centre."

Troy stopped and turned around.

"Centre? What you on about?"

His mother stuck her left arm out, her palm pointing out to his father.

"Miss Darbus reccommended, and your father and me have agreed, for you to be put into a reparative therapy program."

Troy looked shocked.

"What's that?"

"You don't have to worry Troy. It's just a place that will help you forget about your homosexual tendencies and desires."

Troy threw his arms up in the air.

"How many times? I'm not..."

She didn't let him finish.

"So you say Troy. But there are so many things pointing out that you are merely concealing the truth."

It was clear she was about to carry on, but his father throwing the paper on the table and standing up stopped her.

"For goodness sake Moira." He stepped in front of Troy. "You're gay, Troy. That's wrong. The Lord will not allow homosexuality in his kingdom. And I will not allow homosexuality in this house." His voice was raising with each word. "You will enter the therapy, and you will return to us a normal heterosexual boy." He started turning away and walking back to his chair. "Get upstairs and get your stuff packed. Your mother is taking you there tomorrow morning."

And thats how Troy Bolton ended up standing outside the Delia Derbyshire Centre with a bag in his hand.

* * *

Ms Cassandra Yates sat upright at her desk. Papers to her left, papers to her right. She was the boss of this centre. No, scrub that. She was God of this centre.

Everybody answered to her, everyone done as she said. If she said jump, they asked how high. Nobody every questioned her orders.

They were too scared to.

One word out of place, and she has the authority to fire them and make sure that they never work in a high priced job again.

Even the "guests" were afraid of her.

When she was a child, she was very much the same: everything had to go her way. She once asked her mother for a three scoop chocolate ice-cream cone when they were on holiday. After finding a relatively expensive ice-cream stand, the mother could only get a two scoop cone. Bringing it back to her daughter, the young girl started crying at her for not getting a three scoop cone.

A small thing you might say, but to her, nothing was too small. If a glass of juice wasn't filled to a millimetre below the rim, she would cry. If her food wasn't hot enough, she would cry; if it was too hot, she would cry.

She did this all up to her 13th birthday, where her mother finally snapped, upon being told that the very expensive doll she had bought her was wearing the wrong colour - she had asked for a blue dressed doll, whereas this one was light blue - she packed her bags and left, eventually divorcing her loving husband of seventeen years, and eventually remarrying a hapless schmuck who worked in a fast food restaurant.

Now her father, on the other hand, was against this. He never gave in to her tears, her shouts. He always said no.

Until she turned thirteen.

His wife left him, and he had to bring up a thirteen year old girl on his own. He gave in to her, her tears, her shouts, her cries brought her everything - he had no choice. She was a very arrogant girl.

Until she was sixteen. As soon as her birthday came up, he told her to leave. Pack her bags and get out. He'd had enough.

So she did, and she left, and she got a job working for her Aunt, who just happened to be in charge of what is now known as the Delia Derbyshire Centre. She was promoted through the years, and after twenty-one years with the company, became Ms Cassandra Yates, Manager Grade 1.

Now no one dared questioned her.

She was a devoted Catholic. God's word ruled over anything else. And the biggest of these was sexuality. God forbid same sex couples, and she did everything she could to carry that out to the letter.

Her guests came to her being gay, lesbian, transexual, bisexual, omnisexual, anything, and they left heterosexual.

She never gave up on the sanctity of God's vision.

But to others, she had gone power mad.

But they still obeyed her word.

Except one "inmate" she had - seventeen year old Zack Schofield.

Everything about him was wrong. He never did as he was told, he always argued with the staff, he flaunted himself in front of the others - something that Ms Yates herself expressively forbid.

The patrons of this establishment were not permitted to talk, act, or even think of their "disgusting" homosexual thoughts.

But that was just Ms Yates' statement. None of the staff ever enforced it when she wasn't around. They thought it was bad enough the young adults being sent here in the first place. Not that they'd ever argue that of course.

Ms Cassandra Yates had a horrible secondary solution to the reparative therapy. Should her and her staff fail at the Delia Derbyshire Centre, she would send them onto what she called AGP.

In her head, it stood for Anti Gay Police. And that would mean locking them up, subjecting them to cruel punishments intended to beat the gay out of them.

Of course, the parents sending their kids here never knew about her plans for the AGP. And of course, no one yet had ever been subjected to the horrible ideas in her head.

But one guest had very nearly been.

Young Mr Schofield.

He'd been in this place before, just over a year ago. He'd failed the course, but his parents still welcomed him back with open arms, seemingly not caring anymore that their son was still gay.

But last month he'd been caught kissing his next-door neighbour. And his parents freaked. They sent him back to the Centre, where Ms Yates had worked her magic and gotten Zack to finally convert to the straight life.

Another case closed.

Now she had another lot of cases to close.

And one of those new cases should be arriving now.

She put the new entrant's file back on the top of her filing tray and headed outside to meet him.

"Mrs Bolton, I'm Cassandra Yates."


	2. Centremates

A year later , I finally get around to updating this story. Sorry. This chapter was written in November 2007, and was last edited on 15th January 2008. I really love the idea behind this story, and after getting a message asking if I was gonna continue, I've decided to stop fretting over not being able to write anything for My Sliders, and work on this for a bit.

Since it's been a year since I last touched this, I can't remember everything I actually had planned for it. So rather than spend time trying to think what they were, I'm focusing on the three main topics that really drove the story from start to end.

Again, sorry for the year wait.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

"We have some important rules here, Mister Bolton."

Cassandra Yates walked Troy Bolton through the halls of the Delia Derbyshire Centre. They passed many rooms, seemingly occupied by one person each.

Troy was paying attention to her voice, but not taking everything in yet.

His mother had left just a few minutes ago, after giving him a hug which he refused himself to respond to. If she was the one sticking him in this place, why should he bother to hug her goodbye. She'd as much as done that already last night, when she refused to listen to his claim that he was not gay.

Which was true.

Troy Bolton loved girls. He loved their fronts, their bottoms, and tops. Never had he thought that about a guy.

So he had given Ryan a quick kiss as a means of showing friendship after their performances were finally over. It hadn't meant anything. There certainly wasn't going to be another one. It was a friendly thing he had done as response to Gabriella's joke about Ryan not getting one after he had given both her and Sharpay a friendly kiss.

His parents were totally over-reacting.

"Rule number one, and the most important. You must never act on your homosexual tendencies."

Troy just blinked as she said it. What point was there in saying the same thing again? His mother didn't listen. His father wouldn't listen. Why would this stranger listen.

But he said it to himself anyway.

"I'm not gay."

"And just you keep saying that to yourself and you'll be off to a good start."

A few more rules were mentioned as they made their way to the room that would hold Troy. Things about not talking about gay-ness unless in session, no contact being allowed with the outside except on visiting days, and a few other ridiculous things that, in Troy's mind, made this place seem more like a prison than a reparative centre.

Or ex-gay centre as Troy was beginning to see it.

His room was tiny. A single bed, a small chest of drawers, a lone chair, and a laughably dirty yellow rug at the foot of the bed.

"Pack your things away, Mister Bolton. Dinner is served at 2pm, and after that, you will receive a copy of the shedules we have here." Miss Yates smiled an unwelcoming smile. "You will be expected to follow it and the rules to the letter. If you do, by the end of the treatment, you will be fully cured, and can go back to your normal life."

Miss Yates closed the door, leaving Troy standing next to the bed, bag still in his hand. He dropped it to the floor and sat on the bed.

"This place sucks." he said aloud.

The lunch hall was at the opposite end of the building to where Troy was. He half expected Miss Yates to return to his room to take him there. After unpacking, he'd stared out the closed window. Not much to look at. The garden of the centre was flowing with flowers, but to Troy, couldn't compare to the view from his own bedroom window.

A bell had rung at 2pm, obviously signalling dinner. Troy had left his room, amidst the other teenagers who also were heading to the lunch hall. He counted at least eight other people around his age in front of him, and at least six behind him, all treading the three or four corridors to the hall.

"You new here?" a shorter boy beside him asked as they were walking.

"Yeah, came in an hour ago." Troy replied, trying to look at the boy and the way he was going at the same time.

"I'm Bugs." the boy said, quietly saying in his head, 'he's cute'.

"Troy." came the reply. "How'd you get that name?"

The boy smiled in response.

"I used to keep bugs as pets. The name just stuck."

The hall wasn't as big as Troy had imagined. Just a bigger than average room, with six tables that Troy later found weren't all filled at the one time. Over in the corner opposite too where they had entered where three large vending machine-type items that held trayed food, which had been filled only ten minutes before.

"There's a couple of seats empty at our table." Bugs said taking a tray, watching Troy take another one.

"Thanks." Troy replied as he followed the boy to a table with two others at it.

Being introduced to Nancy and Devon, Troy took a seat opposite Bugs.

"So how old you Troy?" Nancy asked, picking at her food with a fork.

"17"

"Looks like you'll be in me and Bugs' group then. Poor Devon here's the only one of us not 17 yet."

Devon put on a face that clearly meant 'piss off', but two seconds later started laughing.

"Sorry, I can never hold facial expressions."

Troy took a bite out of a couple of chips.

"How long have you's been here?"

"Nearly a week." Bugs spoke before taking a swallow from a can. "Nance and Dev about four days. And him there," he pointed to the empty seat opposite Devon where a tray and can sat untouched, "he came in yesterday."

"But we've managed to convert him to the Scooby Gang." Devon called, a bit too loud.

Troy looked at Bugs, who just shrugged his shoulders.

"Not my idea."

Nancy looked over to the door and back to Devon again.

"where is he anyway? If Yatesy sees he's not here, he'll get in trouble."

"There he's now." said Devon.

Troy turned instinctively to see. His face sagged and he dropped the fork back onto the plate.

As the guy reached the table, Troy just stared.

"You have got to be kidding me." the guy said.

Troy shut his mouth as the guy sat down.

How could he be here? At the same place as him. At the same time. Spending the next few weeks in the same group as Ryan Evans... This was not going to go down well.


End file.
